The bill, Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2016, H.R. 1561, was approved unanimously in the Senate late Thursday.

The bill's stated purpose is "to improve the National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration's weather research" through investments in observations, computing and modeling, as well as to expand commercial opportunities for providing weather data.

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It further calls on NOAA to enter into a pilot program contract to evaluate the private sector's capabilities in providing space-based weather data.

Most noteworthy have been the cases brought by Lamar Smith (R-Texas), head of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, and a major recipient of campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry. According to Wikipedia, Smith's House Science committee issued more subpoenas in his first three years than the committee had for its entire 54-year history; many of these subpoenas demanded the records and communications of scientists who published papers that Smith disapproved of. In one of his 2016 subpoenas, Smith called on court decisions defending the work of the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s as valid legal precedent for his investigation-explicitly equating his investigation with the dark McCarthy era in our history when the government trampled on civil liberties.